


Alone Together Alone

by Match (pachipachi)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Episode: s04e11 Orbit, Gen, Post-Gauda Prime, So Basically a Lot of Misery, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 07:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14689533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pachipachi/pseuds/Match
Summary: Vila doesn't think about it much anymore. He dreams about it sometimes.





	Alone Together Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. I apologize for inconsistencies, but all grammatical weirdness is on purpose. Thanks to Jaelijn and comarum for the Tumblr links, and especially to Silikat for the insight that became this fic's central image.

I don't think about it much anymore. Used to, yeah. But I've made my choices. It's not worth dwelling on.

I dream about it sometimes.

The first time wasn't all that long after. It's that G.P. swallows up everything, and I forget so easily that it was only a few months between Malodaar and when we turned the galaxy on its ear.

I don't know why we didn't take separate flats, afterward. They'd made it pretty clear we didn't have to worry about the money. But we went on keeping house together like we were aboard ship, and even Soolin stuck around for a bit. Then Avon agreed to stand for the presidency and that was it for her. If Dayna'd had any sense she would have left then too, but you never could tell her anything.

I heard his voice, and I knew where I was but didn't know I wasn't awake. I heard him calling my name. He had that sick coaxing tone again but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before, so I didn't quite know why I felt afraid.

There was something-- a trick of the light-- and then I was back in the last only hiding place on that shuttle, four five six fingers of light through a vent so close I could touch it, not five minutes past we’d ripped up the flooring together, two hands running along either side of the corridor and now Avon was coming back for me, his footsteps sending shocks through the underdeck so’s I could feel every one. He kept calling and calling my name.

Remembering it in daylight's one thing, because I know the ending. I'm here, aren't I? But a dream isn't a memory, it’s really that moment. Somewhere inside of you it's happening over and over again.

We all die alone. I know that. But it had been Avon and I together from the beginning, and there we were at the end. It's not that I wanted to die that way, or at all, but at the time it felt like the kind of thing that was always meant to happen to us. We met on a dirty cramped spacecraft, we had a good run, here we are on another dirty cramped spacecraft when our luck runs out. Just us, after everything.

There was a time when I thought we might really be together. That's to say I thought he might want to be with me. I don’t mean for sex— or not only sex— but everything. I was probably delusional.

All that tearing around we did, shouting at each other about mass and weight and payload, it's no way to spend your last few minutes. You might as well be alone. But that was what Avon wanted.

He and I are as close as any two might be, and as alone as we’ve ever been. Vila…Vila… he goes on calling, and the next moment he’ll wrench open the hatch and it’ll be over. I’m sick with fear, with something as close to grief as we are to death, blind with it, can’t breathe but it’s Avon’s cadence. And in the dream I’m afraid to die, but I’m more afraid to see his face.

Then the light changed again. It must have been coming on towards morning. And I felt my entire body the way you do after a shock, or a fall. I was in my right place, no matter that it was a cot half rolled into the linen closet. Halfway down the hall there was a light from under Avon’s door, though he would have been asleep by then. I used to go in sometimes and dim the light for him, if I happened to notice. But that time I didn’t.

It’s hard to sort out, all these years gone, what really happened, and what’s part of the dream, and what’s part of a story I’m telling myself. Maybe that’s for the best.

I can’t say it happens often. But when it does, it’s always the same. I don’t wrench myself awake like from a nightmare, though I suppose it is a nightmare. I think I’m going to float away or die with fear or both, and then suddenly I know where I am without opening my eyes. I’m in my own rooms in the residence wing of the presidential palace, and it was Avon who got me there. Avon’s down the hall, and if I know him he’s probably awake. But I don’t go to him. I never do.


End file.
